October 31, 2006

Monster Mash

Kythorn 8, Waterdeep

Luckily, Seren is pretty good at tracking, especially when there is a blood trail to follow. Assuming we were on the trail of Flin, we followed droplets of blood, eventually having to go through 3’ high sewer tunnels (Soveliss had to crawl, and Pratt became a makeshift cape for me as he wrapped his little leathery wings around my shoulders). We stopped once to check our bearings and heard some very disturbing sounds— tearing flesh and lip-smacking?

We hurried ahead to find ourselves in a 20’ hexagonal room with a tunnel in each side. In the middle sat a ghoul eating... something. We hastily killed the foul undead and found its victim— a halfling. Flin! I quickly cast a healing spell on him. I think he’d been awake, just paralyzed, during the ordeal.

The four of us would have left the place then, but I heard a scream from one of the tunnels. We decided to investigate and headed down a sloping tunnel, following the sounds of a woman sobbing. Soon we arrived in an octagonal chamber with sixteen tunnels radiating from it. There were four stakes in the middle of the area, with four humans chained to them— one woman and three men. One man was dead, but Soveliss went to pick the locks on the remaining three. Seren and I had gone up to the stakes while Flin kept watch from our access tunnel. Suddenly, the chained corpse began to move! Seren and I fought it, but it managed to hit her, paralyzing her instantly (this was not the first time; poor Seren keeps getting paralyzed by these things— I think they are attracted to her glow, or her holy symbol). I re-killed it with a well-placed bolt and dragged her back to the tunnel entrance as Soveliss unlocked the final live human. We got the woman to stay with us; the two men ran off— one up a tunnel we’d not yet explored, and the other scrambled past Flin. We could hear creatures coming towards our position and began to move as quickly as we could back out. A scream cut short, emanated from the tunnel ahead of us; I had to threaten to put Pratt in the woman’s hair to get her to pull it together enough to keep moving.

The five of us came out in the hexagonal chamber, our other rescuee already slain by the ever-hungry ghouls. We continued through as quickly as we could, and intended to run straight out to the surface, getting the woman to a temple for healing, when we realized that Flin had stayed back in that room to fight the ghouls that had killed the male human. Soveliss agreed to take charge of getting the woman to safety while Seren and I headed back towards the hexagon chamber again. Suddenly, we felt an earth shattering rumble, and saw what looked to be a largish evergreen tree coming straight for us. It ended its “growth spurt” a few feet in front of us, and we could see halfling feet sticking out from the branches. We pulled Flin out of the branches and patched him up a bit, and I admonished him that we would not save his life a fourth time in the same 24-hour time period— I’m starting to think he enjoys that.

We got out of the sewers, and found ourselves in the quiet alley again. This time we followed the faint sound of music we’d all heard, and discovered that it came from a building called “3 Pearls Festhall.” We also found members of the Nightwatch and told them of the activities in the sewers. They escorted us to Helm’s Hall to make sure we’d not brought any ghoul diseases up with us. Seren was livid to be a “hostage” to the temple for two days. I was okay with it, since I wasn’t injured, but the silly clerics didn’t believe me and kept me there with them for two days as well!

Pratt was still very upset about the “bug incident” but he says he talked to a therapist weasel (whether on staff at the temple, or a figment of his imagination, he didn’t say) and is now just satisfied that the moth wasn’t the bigger party. Honestly! I’ve never heard of such problems with a familiar. I have a distant cousin who has a rather bossy rat, but at least the rat doesn’t drive her to distraction.

Miranda (the human woman) turned out to be rather ill from her ordeal, so it was lucky for her at least, that we wound up resting.

During our stay, the Watch came back and took statements from us all, and met us again as we were gathering up our gear to leave. They determined that we were better suited to handle the problem in the sewers than the local law enforcement! They are willing to pay us 2000 gold apiece for the effort and an additional 50 gold for each ghoul head we bring back as proof. We can have some of the money upfront for replenishing our gear. We also decided to take one evening off before going in, so we headed back to that Festhall. There was actually a line to get in, and a half-orc bouncer that eyed each person in line suspiciously before allowing entrance. I made sure to befriend that fellow on the way in!

The inside was huge, with many bards performing, large bouncers milling about, and secluded alcoves for seating. I’ll keep my eyes and ears open while we plan for tomorrow’s delve.